Piaget's theory of cognitive development is a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence first developed by Jean Piaget. It is primarily known as a developmental stage theory, but in fact, it deals with the nature of knowledge itself and how humans come gradually to acquire, construct, and use it. Moreover, Piaget claims the idea that cognitive development is at the centre of human organism and language is contingent on cognitive development. Below, there is first a short description of Piaget's views about the nature of intelligence and then a description of the stages through which it develops until maturity.

Jerome Seymour Bruner (born October 1, 1915) is an American psychologist who has made significant contributions to human cognitive psychology and cognitive learning theory in educational psychology, as well as to history and to the general philosophy of education.

The theory of multiple intelligenceswas proposed by Howard Gardner in 1983 as a model of intelligence that differentiates intelligence into various specific (primarily sensory) modalities, rather than seeing it as dominated by a single general ability.

Gardner argues that there is a wide range of cognitive abilities, and that there are only very weak correlations among them. For example, the theory predicts that a child who learns to multiply easily is not necessarily generally more intelligent than a child who has more difficulty on this task.

The child who takes more time to master simple multiplication

1) may best learn to multiply through a different approach.

2) may excel in a field outside of mathematics, or

3) may even be looking at and understanding the multiplication process at a fundamentally deeper level, or perhaps as an entirely different process. Such a fundamentally understanding can result in what looks like slowness and can hide a mathematical intelligence potentially higher than that of a child who quickly memorizes the multiplication table despite a less detailed understanding of the process of multiplication.

The theory has been met with mixed responses.Traditional intelligence test and psychometrics have generally found high correlations between different tasks and aspects of intelligence, rather than the low correlations which Gardner's theory predicts. Nevertheless many educationalists support the practical value of the approaches suggested by the theory.